A great Victory

I have just returned from a visit to the Royal Navy Museum in Portsmouth. The visit has increased my tally of visited historic preserved ships, a personal sort of bucket list. Here I stood on the deck of HMS Victory on the exact spot that Nelson was slain. A very modest brass plaque marks the spot. No doubt French tourists take selfies standing on it. Visitors to the Victory are reminded to mind their heads, the lower down you go the better is to be short. But I survived several bangs to the head. The backdrop to the very extensive museum’s premises is currently provided by Britain’s two aircraft carriers which don't look like they're going anywhere soon. They are an impressive sight for all of us who are into ships. Seeing them in the flesh reminds me of what British shipbuilders can do, and indeed the value of job creation schemes. It was I believe the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, one Gordon Brown with a strong constituency interest who approved the expenditure on building these giants. Now the flight deck of HMS Prince of Wales is covered with marquee tents. What a brilliant idea! A new place to hold your wedding or to celebrate something or other, thus raising money to keep the flag flying. The talk was that one of these ships faced the axe (or sale abroad) even if we had never put it to any useful purpose. Now it looks like a reprieve will follow given our courageous government’s commitment to flex its defence muscles. Now, let’s all join in the chorus ’Putin only has one ball’ and revive our spirits!

​My stay in Portsmouth, a city I have never visited before wasn’t enhanced by my look, albeit briefly at its centre. A soulless dump is the only way I can describe it, with its long vacated Debenhams store covered in graffiti, rough sleepers in doorways, shutters pulled down, litter blowing up and down and the only other visitors hoodie youths (share my prejudice) wandering aimlessly about. The pedestrianised area has clearly passed its sell-by date by a couple of decades. Even the station, otherwise well maintained has the kind of 1960s roof covering that harbours grime and makes for a bad first impression. Is this whole place a southern pastiche of Northern decline? Really? There’s decline and decay in the south too? In contrast the Museum is worth a day’s visit and I’m pleased I made the effort. Let’s celebrate what we do well: the Past.